I
am a student at the Waterford
Institute of Technology. I would
greatly appreciate any information
you could send in relation to
the reasons why fat females
are no longer socially acceptable,
whereas they were a sign of
great health and wealth in the
past.

I
look forward to hearing from
you soon

Thank
you for your time,

Emma

Dear
Emma,

You
are right that skinny women
haven't always been the ideal--nor
are they the ideal everywhere.
Earlier in this century in the
U.S., larger women were more
common. As Gloria Steinem has
pointed out--rich cultures value
thin women, poor cultures value
big women--but all cultures
value weakness in women. It's
a simplistic answer, but I think
that it has mostly to do with
the media and them presenting
this as the ideal and as the
norm. The answer isn't to do
away with the thin alternative,
but to present other options.
We can't place all the blame
on the media because after all
we buy the media. And what the
media puts out there is confirmed
by what we see in our own lives.
To find more specific information,
I think that you should read
Suzy Orbach's Fat Is A Feminist
Issue as well as Joan Brumberg's
The Body Project.